The Elusive Closure
by Dream Writer 4 Life
Summary: These wounds won’t seem to heal. This pain is just too real. There’s just too much that time cannot erase." The funeral. Prequel to Le Vrai et le Faux. A Dream Writer Experience.


****

Title: The Allusive Closure

****

Author: Dream Writer 4 Life

****

Genre: Angst/Romance

****

Rating: PG for language

****

Archived: FanFiction.Net, Cover Me, SD-1, and Hopes 'N Dreams 'R Us. Anywhere else, just ask and you shall receive!

****

'Shippers' Paradise: S/V with some implied W/F.

****

Spoilers/Timeline: Spoilers up to S2. Finale: "The Telling"; during those two years that Syd was missing.

****

Summary: "These wounds won't seem to heal. This pain is just too real. There's just too much that time cannot erase." The funeral. Prequel to from _Le Vrai et le Faux_.

****

Disclaimer: I own nothing. If you recognize it, I DEFINITELY do not own it. I'm just borrowing the characters J.J. has so graciously provided us with. Hopefully they won't be too abused, bruised, and scarred for life by the end of this. Lyrics from the summary are from "My Immortal" by Evanescence

****

Suggested Music: "My Immortal," "Hello"…basically anything by Evanescence or anything that makes you feel sad. :(

****

Author's Note: I actually wrote this before _Le Vrai et le Faux_; it's included in my massive end-of-the-year English project. I just *had* to write this first: the night I wrote it was this colossal storm with tornado warnings (the siren actually went off in my town) and lightening and thunder and lots and lots of rain. It was perfect atmosphere. Anyways, please review or send me feedback! I'd love to know what you think! And I *always* start up conversations when people email me. :) 

The Allusive Closure

"Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today—"

He closed his eyes severely, hoping that if he squeezed them tightly enough the next words out of the man's mouth wouldn't be…

"—To mourn the loss of a woman who was taken before those here on Earth were ready to part with her."

Damn.

He decided to tune out after that, not really caring what was being said. The preacher…pastor…priest…father…Well, whatever his name, he was babbling on in some religious speak, spouting hymns, possibly, maybe even psalms. All were foreign to his ears: despite his mother's instillation of Christian beliefs from an early age, he never really picked up on it. He knew She wouldn't have understood, either, having no religious influence in her upbringing whatsoever. The…religious man…was just there as a courtesy: it's never really a funeral without someone in black robes reading from a really old book saying that even though your loved one is gone and never going to come back, they've moved on to a better place…without you. They've left you here to suffer. He suddenly wanted to be told again why that man was present.

The wind breezed past, whipping about hair as if it were something liquid to play with. The women in the small group kept their hats in place with one hand but eventually gave up, and one by one their silky hair appeared, ready to be tossed about by said wind. The men merely kept their feet shoulder width apart and their hands respectfully folded in front of them, very keen on the fact that the harsh gale-force breeze gave their eyes an excuse to water. Many a dry eye dampened "because of the wind".

But there weren't that many people to begin with; She never was a very sociable person and therefore had few close friends. Many were colleagues from "the bank" — which was a cover that didn't have to be used anymore; everyone present besides Religious Man and Amy Tippin knew the truth — and even those were few and far between. Weiss was there along with Marshall and Carrie (he was awkwardly trying to comfort his sobbing not quite girlfriend), Dixon along with his daughters. Even Kendall and Devlin made appearances, near the edge of the small gathering and as far apart as humanly possible. Their covers were friends of Her father's: not entirely untrue, but 'friend' was probably a stretch and wasn't the right word. Even Will was present; he had to practically bribe every nurse in the hospital just to get a wheelchair, and Vaughn had taken it from there. An impish grin almost took hold of his features as he remembered the reckless rush of adrenaline as the two tore out of the hospital without so much as a planned distraction. Agent Michael Vaughn had been rash and heedless, taking "unnecessary risks" ever since her…disappearance.

Because she wasn't dead.

She just wasn't.

The one person whose absence was definitely noticeable was that of her father, Director/Senior Agent Jack Bristow. (They had since promoted him to Director of the task force to find Agent Sydney Bristow, but that faction of the CIA was about to dissipate very quickly, what with her "burial" and all.) Michael wasn't too surprised at this, but he was concerned: the cold, stoical man had never missed an important event that involved his daughter, so why should her funeral be any different? But then again, he was never a man of the limelight, especially when it came time for grieving, so he was most likely busy melting into the shadows…Yes, there he was. If Michael squinted his eyes and tilted his head just right he could make out Jack Bristow's hunched form, slouching against the trunk of a gargantuan weeping willow on the other side of the graveyard. Michael made a mental note to slip through that curtain of drooping leaves after the ceremony.

It was then that he noticed the absence of Religious Man's monotone droning. All eyes were on him, and a drop of panic coupled with flushed cheeks shone on his face. From across the circle, Will's eyes connected with Vaughn's green ones and he flicked his head towards the coffin between them and gave a sharp nod. Not quite knowing what he was agreeing to, he followed Will's lead and offered a solemn nod to Religious Man. It was then that Vaughn noticed the old man's hand refrain from hovering above the latch to the casket, ready to give the mourners a last look inside. He almost retched right there. Deciding to remove his eyes from his immediate surroundings, they swooped upwards to the mottled-grey dome above him.

He couldn't decide whether the sky was with or against him. The storm clouds were laden with rain and ripe to overflow, chasing everyone indoors and driving him away from this place where everything was fake except the grief, weariness, and despair felt by all. But then again…the deluge would beat down upon her grave, her headstone, and although he knew it was all just a front, he couldn't bear the thought of it. It was as if all of those sleepless nights waiting for her to return safely spent walking Donovan or beating himself at checkers or re-reading the same shredded Tolstoy novel for the zillionth time…It was as if it had all been for naught, all been time wasted. And in the back of his mind he knew it was: he could have been with her, at her side assuring that she would come home safe.

So he was at a stalemate on the subject of the sky.

"All quiet on the weather front."

And it wasn't only the weather that was quiet for the moment. Michael's eyes drifted back down form the heavens to casually land on Will, who had seemed to have been blindsided by a request to give an impromptu eulogy, say a few words as one of her closest friends. The same thing had happened at Francie's funeral, although he was more prepared then. (It also helped that he was slightly doped up on Vicodin at the time; he'd had an operation that morning.) From his seat in the metal wheelchair, he ran a hand over his haggard face, which had aged ten years in the span of one; it was drawn, tight, and unsmiling. Neither of them would be able to smile genuinely ever again, not without sufficient prompting from a pleasant memory: for both of them it would most likely be the first time they kissed (Michael with Syd after the take-down of SD-6 and Will with Francie in the kitchen while cooking dinner). But right then, even that wouldn't have been able to do the trick: it just hurt too much. They had buried the real Francie barely a month ago.

Will began to speak in the tried, muted, detached tone — which made him seem like he would burst into tears at any moment — that he had adopted recently. Michael didn't want to hear a thing that man said (again with the excruciating pain), so instead he defocused his eyes, letting them roam over the large public cemetery just as his thoughts were floating across the desert of his mind. When a sharp, poorly suppressed sob sliced through his consciousness like a well-sharpened sword, Michael realized that his eyes had finally settled on a very familiar headstone. Even from a distance of ten yards he knew what the marking said: Francine Calfo. There were no dates, no poems, no frills of any kind; the body was so completely decomposed when they found it at the bottom of the San Francisco Bay that Michael and Jack had to practically dig the grave themselves in order to keep it under wraps. (They had told the Calfo family that Sydney, Francie, and Will had been the victims of an attempted home invasion — which explained the shambled house, Francie was shot dead away and deposited in the Bay, Will had been stabbed and left for dead in the bathroom, and Syd…had been kidnapped. Which was probably the case, anyway: everyone knew that she would not willingly leave her near-perfect life. Never.) No one wanted to conduct a burial for a skeleton with shreds of flesh hanging off the bones and a bullet lodged in the front of the skull. Will and Michael had wanted to bury the best friends next to each other…one day. They never thought they'd be burying Sydney Bristow so soon.

Will's voice had ceased. Again everyone's eyes landed on him, the dolefully expectant façade of one person matching his neighbour's. But this time Michael knew what to expect, and there was a snowball's chance in Hell that he was going to say a word. She's not dead, he had kept insisting right up to an hour before the funeral was scheduled to start. There is no proof! But it had been a year, and they had to do something about the situation: the official investigation had wound down slowly, kept alive by the mere fumes from her father and Michael. And with the case all but closed, the decree from Washington came that it was time for them to get some…closure. Oh, how Michael hated that word. He didn't need closure! Didn't anyone get that? She was still out there somewhere, just waiting for him to track her down, extract her, and whisk her away to Santa Barbara for the vacation he had promised exactly a year ago. _She was still alive._

So Michael shook his head firmly, declining to follow up a shaking Will with his own improvisational eulogy.

The look on Will's face could be summed up in one word: relief.

With this last silent act, Religious Man committed her "to the ground and to the heavens above" and ended the ceremony with the snap of his book's spine. The crowd — if one could call it that — dissipated quickly: Kendall and Devlin continued on their separate ways at similarly clipped paces, ignoring one another's very existence, followed at a distance by Dixon and his family. Will was wheeled away by Amy Tippin, his sister, destined to be yet again shut away in the bowels of the CIA-controlled hospital, subject to more tests and surgeries to correct and rectify the stab wound he received That Night. He gave Michael a lasting look that he would reflect back on in the future for support and the lasting bond that had formed because of this mess; they had entered into this as colleagues and acquaintances and came out of it closer than brothers. They would come to lean and depend on one another as such; out of the ashes of adversity always rise the truly great and pure at heart. Grief unites like no other emotion.

A hand alighted upon Michael's shoulder, practically radiating comfort and condolences. He looked up to find his best friend in the world looking like he never had before. Never, in their entire friendship, had had seen Agent Eric Weiss cry. And tears were definitely falling from his usually amused and twinkling brown eyes. He had been there at the beginning of their relationship ("We kicked their asses, guys. Asses…kicked…") and now…Now he was here for the end. (Well, what Weiss perceived as the end; he could only assume that his "best buddy" was going to give up his frantic search.) Raising his eyebrows in a wordless question and getting no physical or verbal response, he decided to leave Michael alone for a while and wait in the car; besides, if he tried anything stupid the entire cemetery had been bugged for the special occasion. In other words, he would know if his friend talked about or tried to commit suicide. Eric stalked off towards the car, lost in his own thoughts.

That's when the silence hit him. No analogy, no metaphor or simile, could have possibly described how hard it fell onto his shoulders and pressed in on his ears. He felt like he was in a vacuum, void of not only atmosphere and sound but time as well: no birds chirped happily to mock him, no cars rushed past oblivious to his agony. The wind had since waned to not even a whisper; it registered as a breath on the back of his bare neck while he stood unmoving, his eyes fixated on the lambent casket directly in front of him.

The corner of his mouth lifted almost imperceptibly as he fingered the crackling cellophane in his hands. She would have hated this: everywhere there were wreathes of roses and carnations of every colour. Those were the two flowers that she had hated most. The only flowers that she had accepted from him were orchids and baby's breath; a most unusual combination, to be sure. It suited her perfectly. He let the cellophane float to the ground as the flower practically unwrapped themselves: one sprig of baby's breath and a single white orchid. Just as she would have wanted it. Gripping them so tightly that he almost snapped the stems in half, he took one shaky step towards the long, loathed box.

He was a man of few words and wouldn't pretend to be anything else. With a deep, rattling breath he vowed:

"I'll always be looking for you, Syd. I'll never give up hope. Just…be alive when I find you."

Separating the two flowers, he unlatched the top of the casket despite his queasy stomach and laid the baby's breath inside; it almost disappeared into the white satin of the lining. Alongside it he placed a ring he had extricated from a pocket in his suit jacket: a woman's wedding band with a tiny diamond on it. (No one would ever know, but on the inside was carved a date and two words: "10/1 True Love".)

They were burying an empty casket.

For appearance's sake.

For "closure".

Slamming the lid closed, he padlocked it with a certain level of vengeance and malice, condemning the ring and sprig of flowers to rot in the lonely box for eternity. Laying the wilting orchid on top of the curved covering, his hand lingered slightly as if reluctant to let go. Michael turned to face the headstone, the one that he had designed himself. It read:

"Sydney Anne Vaughn

Ageless

Timeless, faceless, but not heartless."

He had given her his last name: it completed the process, sealed the deal.

They were married, if only on paper and in his heart.

Michael took a seat with his back to the smooth granite, facing away from the casket: he couldn't bear to look at it for another second. He stared intently at his hands, willing them to find a way to piece together the shards of his broken life. But no answer would come. Drawing his knees up to his chest, he held his head in his hands, a tempestuous and volcanic surge of despair and defeatism overcoming every bodily function.

And then the rains came.


End file.
